A typical conventional Web page authoring tool has a browser-type edit screen for displaying a view object to visualize each tag content as well as a source edit screen for displaying the source of a Web page document to enable the editing of the document source code. A Web page sent from a Web server to a client browser may be constructed of or generated from several documents in an embedding relationship in which a document embeds one or more other documents according to embed-related code (e.g., jsp:include or jsp:directive.include). The conventional Web page authoring tool shows only an icon representing a child document in the browser-type edit screen even if the child document is embedded in document to be edited as a parent document according to the embed-related code. A user who creates or edits the document to be edited (hereinbelow called “author”) cannot view or edit the content of the child document in the browser-type edit screen showing the parent document.
Japanese patent application laid-open No. 06-19894 (1994) discloses a document processor displaying tree diagram information on a plurality of documents connected in a parent-child relationship, which is manually created and stored separately from documents to be edited (see paragraphs 0055-0063). Then a tree diagram information is displayed so that a desired document will be called up to the screen by placing a cursor at the position of the desired document name and pressing a call key to allow the author to edit the desired document.
As mentioned above, the conventional browser-type edit screen has problems, such as that the child document is displayed as just an icon so that the author cannot find how the child document is embodied in the layout of the parent document and that the child document cannot be edited collectively in the browser-type edit screen for the parent document. In order to solve the problems, the present applicant has proposed the following Web page authoring apparatus in Japanese patent application No. 2004-350470.
The abovementioned Web page authoring apparatus includes:
means for individually managing the contents of documents forming the respective portions of a Web page to be edited, as managed documents;
means for deriving from the contents of each managed document structure information of each managed document including an embed-related code for embedding another document at a predetermined embedding position, as structure information by document;
means for assembling structure information of the Web page to be edited by combining the structure information by document based on the embed-related code in each structure information by document, as Web page structure information;
means for generating edit screen data to create an edit screen on which the tag contents of a document to be edited are converted to visual representation, based on the contents of the managed documents and the Web page structure information;
means for generating an edit screen based on the edit screen data;
means for detecting a managed document including a portion corresponding to an edited portion on the edit screen, as relevant managed document; and
means for synchronizing the contents of the relevant managed document with the edited contents on the edit screen based on edit operations on the edit screen;
wherein the edit screen data generating means matches the edit screen data with the edited contents on the edit screen based on the edit operations on the edit screen.
The Web page authoring apparatus allows the author to edit a plurality of documents, connected in a direct parent-child relationship or in a chain of parent-child relationships, collectively in such a browser-type edit screen that displays them in virtually the same visual representation as on a browser screen, while viewing the content of these documents. In the browser-type edit screen, however, the author cannot find what kinds of documents are the elements of the Web page to be edited or where to edit the content in the browser-type edit screen when the author wants to edit a specified document. This makes it difficult to edit documents in a reasonable manner.
The document processor disclosed in Japanese patent application laid-open No. 06-19894 is to call up, to the screen, tree diagram information separately in a memory to allow the author to specify and edit one document at a time. In other words, the tree structure of two or more documents displayed are not for the documents in a batch editing view. Further, the tree relationship between documents in the document processor disclosed in Japanese patent application laid-open No. 06-19894 is not created based on embed-related code in each parent document. Therefore, when creating a new document, the author is required to design a parent-child relationship and enter, manually in a predetermined window, each element of a tree diagram related to the tree information one by one based on the designed parent-child relationship.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a Web page authoring apparatus, method, and program for displaying information related to batch-document to be edited in an appropriate manner when an author edits plural document to be edited connected in a parent-child relationship collectively in such a browser-type edit screen to show virtually the same content and style as on a browser screen.